This book begins by informing readers that ‘In pre-modern times, death was a more visible phenomenon than it is nowadays.’ Really? Could any historian of early modern Europe see the photos of the coffins of Covid-19 victims in Bergamo in 2020, piled up in stacks because the cemeteries had run out of space, and not think of similar images of the coffins of plague victims piled up in stacks for the same reason between the 1340s and the 1650s? Could any historian of early modern Europe read the lament of a funeral director of Bergamo in 2020 – ‘A generation has died in just over two weeks. We've never seen anything like this’ – and not think of the similar laments voiced by contemporaries in time of plague?
Despite the editors’ opening disclaimer, therefore, this collection of eleven essays on the relationship between art and death in the Low Countries and its diaspora could hardly be more topical. The essays (all in English and all beautifully illustrated) are arranged chronologically, according to the period of the main object or event discussed, starting with a chapter on the tombs of Dukes Philip the Bold and John the Fearless of Burgundy, completed in 1412 and 1470 respectively, and ending with another on the death and funeral of Stadholder William iv of Orange in 1751. The editors state that the essays also fall into ‘four categories, each characterised by a prevalent theme: bodily materiality; remembrance; theatricality; and what might be termed an anthropology of dying’. Although the majority of the chapters focus on the early modern Low Countries – with one on the Dutch Revolt and two on the Dutch Republic, one on Rembrandt and one on Rubens – several stress the ‘diaspora’ of Netherlands art. Andrew Murray's examination of the tombs of the dukes of Burgundy, originally in the Charterhouse of Champmol near Dijon, notes that Claus Sluter from Haarlem led the team that created the elaborate funeral monument of Duke Philip, which his son Duke John decreed must be the model for his own tomb together with an effigy of his wife, Margaret of Bavaria. (Because both tombs were moved and then ransacked in the 1790s, several of the fine alabaster statues of ‘mourners’ surrounding the effigies were stolen, and some must now be admired elsewhere – including four acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio.) Aleksandra Lipińska's study of the materials used to represent death in early modern Netherlandish funeral monuments includes a detailed examination of the impressive tomb of Melchior, baron Reden, in a church in Frýdland (now in the Czech Republic), done by the Amsterdam sculptor Gerhard Hendrik around 1610. Amy Knight Powell analyses the remarkable portrait in 1669 of Dirck Wilre, a slave trader who became governor of the fortress of El Mina, more than 2,000 miles away from the Netherlands on the coast of modern Ghana. She produces convincing evidence that the now forgotten artist, Pieter de Wit, painted the governor in his luxurious apartment in the castle, headquarters of the Dutch West India Company in Africa, making it probably the only ‘real or imagined pre-photographic image of the interior of Elmina Castle or any other colonial fort in Africa’.
The volume contains a few errors – ‘Breslau’ should be Wrocław (p. 15); Egmont and Hornes were executed in 1568, not 1566 (p. 17) – and occasionally one could ask for more information. For example, when we are told that in 1650 ‘Anne of Austria and her entourage damaged church ornaments and furniture and pilfered alabaster figures’ from the tombs of the dukes of Burgundy, it is perhaps relevant to mention (though it does not excuse her pilfering) that Anne was a direct descendant of the dukes through her great-grandfather, Emperor Charles v (whose early wills specified that he be buried in the Charterhouse beside them). An index would have been helpful. Nevertheless, anyone interested in the relationship between Dutch art and death between 1400 and 1800 will find much fascinating new material here, as well as a reminder of the enduring relevance of interment, bereavement and remembrance to those who remain.
